Reposted from ASB Zeitung

Over the weekend in Rosenheim, a part of a project blending climate and migration art was vandalized. As per the police report released on Saturday, a plane styled and painted for display outside the City Museum was repeatedly slashed and damaged at multiple points, but the culprit(s) apparently didn't manage to light it on fire. The destruction also extended to some "Climate Vests" - planters shaped and painted to resemble these vests in front of a local church, which were partially cut up.

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Reposted from AP News

Animal rights activists pasted a cartoon image over a portrait of King Charles III on Tuesday at a London art gallery, the latest in a series of incidents at U.K. museums as campaigners use vandalism to publicize their causes.
A group called Animal Rising shared a video of campaigners pasting a picture of a character called Wallace, from the “Wallace and Gromit” comedy series, over the king’s head. The so-called ‘’comic redecoration″ was designed to highlight an investigation that Animal Rising said found widespread violations of animal husbandry rules at farms approved by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. A speech bubble next to the head of Wallace read: “No cheese, Gromit. Look at all this cruelty on RSPCA farms!”
The painting is protected by a sheet of plastic and wasn’t damaged, according to the Philip Mould Gallery, where it is on display. The larger-than-life painting by Jonathan Yeo was unveiled last month and is the first portrait of Charles to be completed since he ascended the throne in 2022. It captures the king in shades of red with his hands clasped atop the hilt of his sword and a butterfly flitting above his right shoulder.

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Reposted from BBC

A Tube train restored to its original 1938 condition has been vandalised, leading to the cancellation of a heritage event. The London Transport Museum planned journeys along the Piccadilly line between Acton Town and Oakwood on Sunday, with ticketholders enjoying a 50-minute trip between the stations. The museum said it was working with conservators to find out the extent of the damage. It said British Transport Police (BTP) was investigating the vandalism. Elizabeth McKay, from London Transport Museum, said she was "devastated" by the news.
She added: "Our heritage Tube train operations are a wonderful way for the public to experience the history of the capital and the proceeds from ticket sales support our work as an education and heritage charity.
"It is truly disappointing that vandals would seek to ruin this experience for people and cause damage to such an iconic, heritage vehicle. "We will be working with London Underground specialists and conservators to understand the extent of the damage and return the train to its former glory."

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Reposted from Artnet News

As the Spanish Civil War raged between 1936 and 1939, Republican forces took hold of thousands of paintings and sculptures, as well as other valuables, to safeguard them from the conflict. When the regime of dictator Francisco Franco took control, it never returned them, and these items, including books, furniture, ceramics, liturgical ornaments, and jewelry, made their way into various state museums. His regime came to an end in 1975, but it is only now, 50 years later, that Spain’s culture ministry has put forth a list of more than 5,000 items that were seized.
The artifacts are currently in the collections of nine institutions, including, in Madrid, the National Archaeological Museum, the National Museum of Romanticism, the National Museum of Decorative Arts, the National Museum of Anthropology, the Museum of America and the Sorolla Museum; in Valencia, National Museum of Ceramics and Decorative Arts “González Martí”; and, in Valladolid, the National Museum of Sculpture. The Ministry of Culture also uncovered a painting preserved at its own headquarters.
“We’re offering a space in which people can learn about our history,” said Spain’s culture minister, Ernest Urtasun. “We’re also opening the door to returning those pieces that can be identified to their rightful owners.”
During the first days of the military uprising, according to the department of culture, the Republican government established the Artistic Treasury Board, whose purpose was to protect cultural assets. As insurgent troops occupied more territories, they created the Service for the Defense of National Artistic Heritage, which was to be responsible for returning the works to their owners after the war. 
One group of works came from collector and art dealer José Weissberger, who was prosecuted by the Court of Political Responsibilities, which targeted supporters of the Republic. They are the only works in the newly released list that originated in embargoes carried out by the Franco dictatorship, according to the Ministry of Culture; they found their way into the holdings of the Museum of Decorative Arts. 
Yesterday’s publication of the list is an outgrowth of the Democratic Memory Law, which went into effect in 2022 and is meant to address the aftermath of the Franco regime. It also includes provisions requiring the teaching of the history of the dictatorship, renders void convictions for military rebellion, requires the exhumation of mass graves, and requires the removal of various Francoist monuments, among others. 
Those who believe they have a claim on any of the 5,126 artifacts can submit an application with the Ministry of Culture, which says that responses will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

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Reposted from Le Monde

Smoked emerged from the Château de Versailles on Tuesday, June 11 and several thousand people were evacuated after a fire broke out on part of the roof under construction, but was quickly brought under control, Le Monde learned from the estate's press office. The fire started in the marble courtyard, a black-and-white paved area not far from the king's bedroom.
Smoke was spotted at 3:13 pm in a construction area, a press officer confirmed. The fire department was called and the visitors were evacuated as a safety precaution. The fire was quickly extinguished "with a bucket of water," the department's fire and rescue services (SDIS) told Agence France-Presse.
The Château and gardens reopened at around 4:30 pm. Almost 100 fire-fighters were mobilized and teams remained on site to prevent any further outbreak of fire in the attic, added the same source.
No one was injured and there was no damage to the collections, the press office old Reuters. The Château de Versailles, the third most visited site in France, behind Disneyland Paris and the Louvre Museum, welcomed 8.1 million visitors in 2023, 77% of whom were foreign.

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Reposted from CJLS

There’s nothing left of the Bangor Sawmill Museum after an early morning fire in Digby County.
Firefighters were called to the scene just after 4 a.m. Saturday in Meteghan River.
Meteghan fire chief Kevin Saulnier says it was fully engulfed when they arrived.
No injuries were reported, and the cause is under investigation.
After the fire was put out, the remains of the building had to be torn down for safety reasons.
Saulnier says four other fire departments provided mutual aid, Salmon River, Little Brook, St Bernard and Southville.
He says they are all volunteers, up to 100 people were on scene at one point.
The Bangor Sawmill Museum was a restored 19th century water-powered-turbine lumber sawmill.

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Reposted from Artnet News

Performance artist Deborah De Robertis was charged with the damage and theft of “cultural property” after tagging five artworks, including Gustav Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde, with the slogan #MeToo. A French prosecutor announced the indictment of De Robertis, as well as two others, on Monday. In early May, the women entered the Centre Pompidou-Metz in northern France and graffitied the glass pane protecting Courbet’s 1886 painting of a women’s nude torso and exposed vulva. The painting was on loan from Paris’s Musée d’Orsay for the show “Lacan, the exhibition. When art meets psychoanalysis,” which examines theories of the unconscious proposed by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who once owned the Courbet painting. Five other works, by artists such as Valie Export, Louise Bourgeois, and Rosmarie Trockel, were also tagged. A photograph by De Robertis, taken during a performance of Mirror of Origin (2014), in which she poses nude beneath Courbet’s work, was also tagged. Meanwhile, an embroidered piece by the French artist Annette Messager, titled I Think Therefore I Suck (1991), was stolen from the museum. In a video taken of the action, protesters chanted “Me Too” as they were removed from the premises by museum security.  De Robertis later claimed to have orchestrated the action as part of performance work, titled You Don’t Separate the Woman from the Artist. The title references the ongoing debate about whether art can be appreciated in isolation from the behavior of its creator. 

The slogan #MeToo gained prominence in 2017 as part of a global movement against the sexual violence of women. At the peak of the movement’s momentum, a slew high-profile artist, as well as staff in the gallery and museum sectors, faced accusations of sexual harassment or assault.   De Robertis told the AFP that the performance at the Centre Pompidou-Metz was staged because “the very closed world of contemporary art has remained largely silent until now.” She had previously made headlines for exposing herself in front of L’Origine du Monde, Édouard Manet’s Olympia (1863), and the Mona Lisa.  In a statement shared via Medium on May 13, De Robertis wrote: “I violated museums, from the Orsay Museum to the Louvre Museum to the Pompidou Center. I entered them by force, without consent or permission, to claim my place in history.” Addressing “collectors, art critics, gallery owners, historians, directors of institutions, art centers and museums,” De Robertis denounced “predators” who leverage their power in the art world to exploit vulnerable women artists. Curator Bernard Marcadé, who co-organized the Centre Pompidou-Metz show, was the only person named in the post. According to AFP, De Robertis has not been detained, although she is barred by court order from entering exhibitions in the Moselle region, which includes part of France and Luxembourg.

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Reposted from Artnet News

A climate activist for the group Riposte Alimentaire (Food Counterattack) has been arrested after gluing a poster onto a masterpiece by Monet at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris on Saturday. This protest is the latest in a slew of actions claimed by Riposte Alimentaire that took place at high-profile cultural institutions designed to call attention to the climate crisis. “This destruction of art by delinquents cannot be justified in any way,” declared France’s culture minister Rachida Dati on X (formerly Twitter). “It must stop!” She added that she is in touch with the minister of justice to work towards implementing a new penal policy to punish these acts of protest, which often cause no long-term harm so evade prosecution for the damage of cultural property. The museum confirmed that the painting has been inspected by a restoration expert who reported no permanent damage. It is now back on display. The painting Coquelicots (Poppy Field) (1873) is a charmingly picturesque view of a woman and child strolling through a field filled with bright red poppies. It was painted near Argenteuil, a small-town northwest of Paris where Monet settled in 1871 and is currently part of the “Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism” exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay (through July 14th, 2024). As seen in a video of the attack posted by Riposte Alimentaire, the protestor stuck a poster over the top of the painting that showed a comparatively dystopian vision of the world as it might look in 2073, or even 2173, if urgent action isn’t taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The details of this scene are hard to make out but there appear to be no poppies in its barren landscape. Instead, it is the sky that is flushed with tones of fiery red. The activist wore a white t-shirt with the words “+4°[C] L’Enfer” (“+4°[C] Hell”) handwritten in black pen. After affixing the poster over the protective glass covering the canvas, she glued her hand to the wall just below the picture frame and began to address visitors milling around the gallery, who remained quiet and did not attempt to intervene. “This nightmarish image awaits us if no alternative is put in place,” she declared. “At four more degrees, hell awaits us,” referring to the serious consequences of global temperatures potentially rising to 4° Celsius (7° Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. According to reports by French news agency AFP, the museum plans to file a criminal complaint. It did not respond to a request for further comment by publishing time. “This is what Claude Monet would probably have painted in 2100 if no radical measures are taken to stop climate change by then,” Riposte Alimentaire wrote on X. “As a reminder, this IPCC scenario is not the most pessimistic, since a trajectory of more than +4°C is projected.” It drew attention to the role of “productivist and ecocidal agriculture” in contributing 21 percent of France’s greenhouse gas emissions. It called for substantial reform, opposing the new Agricultural Orientation Law, which is currently under discussion in French parliament. Last month it was reported that only some of its targets, like keeping 15 percent of farmland for organic agriculture, had been scrapped.
Just last month, two activists were arrested for scattering bags of orange powder over the floors of the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, outside Paris. Just days later, the group targeted one of France’s most prized paintings, Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People at the Louvre. It has just been rehung following a major six-month restoration. In February, two protestors flung soup at Monet’s Spring (1872) at the Musée des Beaux-Art in Lyon, and the month before that they hurled pumpkin soup at the Mona Lisa at the Louvre.

Reposted from Lyrasis

The Performing Arts Readiness (PAR) project is offering the free emergency preparedness webinars listed below that are tailored to the needs of performing arts organizations during June:
Webinars:
 
Community Recovery Through Arts and Culture, June 6 at 2:00
Description: Arts and culture - through the artists and organizations that bring them to life in communities - have a vital role to play in recovery from disasters. Whether connecting people through music, dance, theater or other experiences; providing moments of respite, joy, and humor; allowing people to tell their personal stories of the disaster through visual, verbal, or other means; or even just providing a place to congregate, gather information, or grab a cup of coffee, arts and culture and the organizations that produce them enable us to move from victimhood to personhood, even if only for a moment, and help us rebuild the social infrastructure of our individual and community lives.
In this webinar, we will focus on how artists and arts organizations can engage in this work. We will provide background in basic disaster management principles, share good practices, give guiding principles, brief how-tos, leave you with resources for further study, and answer any questions you may have. Rebuilding social infrastructure strengthens communities’ abilities to move forward after disasters. Learn how to be part of the process and gain a seat at the table in your community’s recovery.
Instructor: Mary Eileen Fouratt, Amy Schwartzman, and Mollie Quinlan-Hayes

Lessons Learned from the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival Shooting, June 12, 2024 at 2:00 ET
Description: Kelly Hubbard was attending day 3 of the Route 91 Country Music Festival with her daughter and a few friends when someone opened fire on the crowd of 22,000 attendees. 58 attendees died that evening, with hundreds more severely injured, making that night the worst mass shooting to date in our Country’s history. Kelly speaks as a survivor, but also as an emergency manager on the events of that evening to help others in her profession and in the entertainment and hospitality industry to improve large event planning and mass casualty response.
This session will reflect on lessons for all parties involved in large pop-up location event planning and mass casualty response. Learning outcomes will include considerations for security and safety in pop-up venues, coordination concepts with local government partners, understanding the response and recovery process, considerations for integration of non-traditional response partners and trauma care for survivors and staff. Concepts such as how to integrate those who may not think they have a role (such as the hotels that became triage and shelter centers with no warning) will be covered. Insight will be provided on how survivors of traumatic events get information regarding hospitals, Family Assistance Centers, and recovery resources, especially when watching the news is experiencing the trauma all over again.
Instructor: Kelly Hubbard

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Reposted from Tim Richardson

It happened in an instant. The speeding motorcycle slammed into the back of a delivery truck. It happened so quickly that there was no avoiding the accident. The motorcycle was going too fast, and the truck was traveling too slow. My wife witnessed this horrible event yesterday when she was a passenger in a car right behind the motorcycle. While she didn’t know either the truck or motorcycle driver, she was visibly shaken as she witnessed the aftermath on a busy road. The biker’s helmet and shoes had both flown off during impact and his bloody skin was exposed through his ripped clothing. He was begging for people to move him off the hot pavement. Thankfully, law enforcement and medical professionals arrived quickly. Their rapid response and knowledge may have saved his life. Sometimes a few seconds is all it takes for bodily injury or an accident to occur. However, there are other types of injury that aren’t as quick to appear like the aftermath of a motorcycle accident. It’s not as easy to identify them because they take time to develop, and the signs can be hidden. These are the internal injuries related to a person’s mental health and well-being. The causes can be so different and affect people in a myriad of ways. The symptoms can appear so slowly and subtly. Unlike the accident my wife observed, the victim may not ask for help. While organizations should always make it a priority, May is Mental Health Awareness Month which is a great reminder to keep tabs on the health of your team and others in your life. Below are a few common signs that someone might be struggling and needing help. There’s a complete list at https://www.nami.org/about-mental-illness/warning-signs-and-symptoms/

·      Excessive worrying or fear

·      Feeling excessively sad or low

·      Confused thinking or problems concentrating and learning

·      Extreme mood changes, including uncontrollable “highs” or feelings of euphoria

·      Prolonged or strong feelings of irritability or anger

·      Avoidance of friends and social activities

·      Difficulties understanding or relating to other people

·      Inability to carry out daily activities or handle daily problems and stress

It would be difficult to recognize these symptoms without having regular contact. Conscientious leaders are tuned in to those around them and check in regularly with those who may be suffering. They communicate available resources that can provide confidential help and support. They take time out every day to simply ask questions like; “How are you doing? Is there any way I can support you today? Do you need to take some time to pause to regain your stride?” When accidents or mental health issues occur, it’s not just the victim that suffers. Make workplace wellness and positive mental health a priority for your organization.

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